Six Gentlemen Decoction adding Aucklandia and Amomum (Xiangsha Liujunzi Tang) for the treatment of ulcerative colitis: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials

Yuan H, Zhang T, Huang S, Zhou J, Park S · European Journal of Integrative Medicine · 2020 June

DOI 10.1016/j.eujim.2020.101119

Objective

To systematically evaluate the efficacy and safety of Six Gentlemen Decoction with Aucklandia and Amomum (SGDAA; Xiangsha Liujunzi Tang) in the treatment of ulcerative colitis through a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Conclusions

SGDAA treatment for ulcerative colitis, especially when administered for more than 4 weeks, was found to be more effective in terms of treatment response and curative response compared to conventional Western medicine or other Chinese medicine. The meta-analysis included seven RCTs with 614 colitis patients, highlighting the potential superiority of oral SGDAA for the treatment of ulcerative colitis.

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Insights

Oral treatment with Six Gentlemen Decoction with Aucklandia and Amomum (SGDAA), a traditional Chinese medicine, significantly improves the treatment of Ulcerative colitis compared to conventional Western medicine.

In the method of this research, Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) spanning the period from January 1960 to October 2019 were analyzed. These trials examined the use of the traditional Chinese medicine in question for treating ulcerative colitis. This extensive data was drawn from numerous scientific and medical databases in English, Korean, and Chinese. The resulting information was then processed through a software named RevMan 5.3 to conduct a meta-analysis. Furthermore, the studies were scrutinized based on their homogeneity and the odds ratios and confidence intervals were evaluated for accuracy and validity of each. In the exploration of the results, seven metanalysed studies (involving a total of 614 colitis patients) showed that the traditional Chinese medicine SGDAA had a significantly greater effect in treating ulcerative colitis than conventional western medicine. This conclusion was drawn from the comparative analysis of the SGDAA group (consisting of 308 patients) and the control group (composed of 306 patients receiving conventional Western medicine or another Chinese medicine). The analysis showed the SGDAA treatment was significantly more effective especially when the treatment exceeded 4 and 12 weeks. The beneficial impact of the SGDAA treatment in ulcerative colitis was seen in the forms of effective response and curative response.